


Sunshine Party On The Docks With Zombies

by lookingdead



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Sgrub Session, Gen, Kinda, Sickfic, i guess, sorta - Freeform, there sure is some puking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-12
Updated: 2015-05-12
Packaged: 2018-03-30 05:09:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3924067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lookingdead/pseuds/lookingdead
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's thrown himself onto your couch like an old filthy blanket, sinking into the cushions like a rock. He's barely any taller than the last time you saw him. You don't know if it's even ethical to let him hang out here. He got himself into this. You don't have anything to do with it and you don't want to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sunshine Party On The Docks With Zombies

There's a fly buzzing around the ceiling lamp. It keeps twitching it's little wings, keeps trying to fly further into the light. You can't focus enough to crush it, though. It'll have to wait.

You don't know when you last saw this guy. God, it might've been over two sweeps ago. 

He's thrown himself onto your couch like an old filthy blanket, sinking into the cushions like a rock. He's barely any taller than the last time you saw him. You don't know if it's even ethical to let him hang out here. He got himself into this. You don't have anything to do with it and you don't want to.

The tips of his fingers barely graze the carpet as his arm pours off the side of the sofa. His overgrown claws, long enough for a desperate defense, twitch in his sleep. His enormous coat hides his form like a body bag. You can't really even see him breathe if you don't look carefully enough. His mouth is wide open, though, and his teeth are a gnarled mess.

Every once in a while he'll take in a deep breath, and his whole body will rise with it. 

Otherwise, he looks dead. 

That fly buzzes a little more and your eye twitches.

You swear his blood wasn't green last time you saw him. You don't know what color it was. He changes it all the time. He changes it every sweep. You keep telling him it'd be better if he just picked an identity and stuck with it, but then he tells you to shut up and that he has to fake his own death again. 

This isn't going to work out.

He's only making it worse for himself.

It might've been teal last time. That's the highest he's ever gone. 

You wonder if you should clean up your hivestem. The coffee table is covered in empty takeout containers and books and video games and trash and God only knows what else. The floor's not much better. The couch was only just barely cleaned off before he passed out on it.

You weren't exactly expecting the shithole to just kind of waltz up to your hivestem door in the middle of a particularly blisteringly sunny day, delirious and covered in sunburns saying he was like, just so glad to see you he missed you so much, asshole, god what a dick he's been for not talking to you ha ha can he just sleep on your couch oh god im gonna die please help me it hurts so bad im fucking bleeding these burns are so deep please help me im going to throw up please help me.

You can't fucking believe him.

You're not cleaning up.

You look for that fly with the back of your mind. You reach up to the ceiling with just your thoughts and run your mind over it. You find the lamp and focus on it.

He's probably not even going to wake up for a while. There's no point. He probably won't even stay. He'll probably just leave and you won't have to deal with the mess he's made of his life.

You should probably, maybe... do something about him, though. God, he's probably got heat stroke. He smells like puke. Wait, shit. He's probably definitely got heat stroke. You can't have him die on your couch. That'd suck too much. You can't have this shit hole die on your couch.

You pull your mind away from the lamp to find the collar of his coat. Without lifting a single finger or moving from where you stand, you grab his coat and pull it off of him. You throw it on the floor next to the couch.

Next is his shirt. You hesitate a little more. Your fingers twitch a little. Then you pull that off of him too, over his head and off his arms while he lays limp like a doll.

Actually, it's more like peeling it off of him. It's stuck pretty good to his skin with a nice adhesive made of sweat and blood. Ohh, shit, he's burnt pretty bad. Oh fuck.

You throw the shirt on the floor with the coat and continue to be otherwise frozen in place.

He's less skinny than you remember, so you suppose that's a good sign. He was a really skinny kid. He's pretty bulky now, though. He looks a little less like anyone could break him over their knee and a little more like he could stand in a fight. He looks sturdier, better fed. 

His blood is also olive green. 

His back is covered in blisters. They aren't sunburns, it's just that his coat got hot enough to burn his skin. He's from way further north, and he's still wearing a thick leather coat like it's necessary. You wonder how he even got here.

He's been literally baking all day. He's probably royally fucked, then, huh. Okay. How do you fix this? 

It's still sunny out. Your hivestem's pretty hot. The air conditioner is faulty. 

You should probably do something to cool him off, first. He's probably dehydrated. Should you wake him up and get him to drink something? Can you wake him up? Pulling his clothes off didn't do anything to him. You doubt you can wake him up.

He's still breathing, right?

He's still breathing?

You hold your own breath. You look for the rise and fall of his back. You should probably flip him over. It's probably not good for him to be on his stomach. It might make it harder for him to breathe.

That fly is still buzzing, hitting its body against the inside of the light.

You stare at his body. It doesn't move. He's not moving.

You unclench your jaw to swallow.

You slowly decide to bend your knees and lower yourself to the floor so that you are level with his face. Your joints crack as you lean down. You stare at him, not sure if you feel comfortable getting any closer. What if he wakes up? What if he's upset? What if he calls you stupid for trying to check his breathing of course he's breathing you idiot who the hell is fucking stupid enough to not breathe god i can't believe-

That fly. That fly. That fucking fly. You can't hear him breathing over that fucking fly. 

You feel over the ceiling again and reach into the lamp and feel all over for the fly and it just keeps escaping your grasp. It just keeps-

You feel him exhale on your face. 

His breath is hot and smells worse than you could ever hope to describe, but he's breathing at least.

Okay. Good.

You sit back from him, satisfied that he's alive enough.

He even makes a little groan. He's definitely alive. 

Then he groans a little louder and his hand moves in a shitty attempt at consciousness. 

You think maybe you aught to flip him over. 

You push him with your thoughts, against his shoulder and chest and knees, and gently roll him onto his back. He flops limply and puts up no more protest than a dead animal. His arm winds up across his face, but you decide to adjust it for him and drop it by his side. 

Some more groaning comes in response, but you are still pretty sure he is unconscious. You can see his chest rising and falling with his breath this way, though, so it will be easier to gage what level of alive he is.

Currently, not very alive. 

His breaths are tiny and shallow. Is there another way he should be oriented to allow him to breathe better? His chin is sort of tucked into his collar bone. That's probably not ideal. You drag him down the couch a little by his ankle so that he is laying flat on his back.

He grunts.

He has blisters all over his back, though. Huge, black, splotchy, green-oozing, inflamed, blisters. Shit, laying on his back might not be good then. There's probably no good way to orient him. 

Maybe on his side?

You don't know. 

He looks fine for now.

He's breathing, so it's probably fine. 

You look briefly at the shirt he's been wearing, which doesn't look too old. The sign he has been living under reads as "snake". You wonder what fun name he came up with for that. 

His features look odd, you realize. As they would, for someone who is constantly injecting themselves with new and fun chemicals from illegal sources. He looked strange last time you saw him, but he's gotten worse.

His face structure hasn't particularly changed. You're pretty sure that's one of the things hemo-dying doesn't effect. But his horns are a big give-away that he's been messing with his body a little too often. They've gotten bigger, at least, so they aren't really nubs anymore. They're about average length now.

They're just... weird shaped. They're thicker at the bottom, but in a sort of lumpy way. The right one has a small lumpy mass halfway down. It looks like he has an infection, but you know it's from doing things to his body that he doesn't really understand. He doesn't know how genetics and hormones work enough to be doing this. The assholes he buys this shit from don't know how genetics and hormones work enough to be doing this.

You have no idea how he's still alive, to be honest.

It's kind of impressive.

Or just stupid. 

Another groan rolls up from his throat. His head moves a little, his eyebrows scrunch together. 

Right, you were going to try and cool him down or something. You keep your eyes on him but let your brain feel its way over to the thermal hub. The nutrition block and the living block are one room, so it isn't a complex move.

You watch him breathe. You fill a cup with ice and bring it over to the table beside you along with a plastic bag. You need a towel too, and grab one from the small closet by the door and drop it into your own hands. You wrap some ice in it with your fingers, the coldness pleasant on such a scorching day. 

You didn't feel like sleeping today anyway.

That fly is still buzzing. You still cant manage to grab it.

You lay the towel full of ice on his forehead and hope that helps.

Yeah.

Then you finally catch that fly.

\---

He doesn't move at all for a while. He groans occasionally. His bloody hands might twitch. He mostly just breathes, though.

You don't pay close attention to him other than occasionally changing the ice on his forehead. You mostly sit in the arm chair next to him with your husktop. You idly play some game you downloaded a while ago. You can't bring yourself to put much effort in. You aren't even upset when you die again and again and again when you should be fine.

After you die the sixth time, though, you pull your fingers off the keys and sit back. Then you stare at the screen. Then you glance over at the couch. Then you go back to staring at the screen.

He moans a little in his sleep, as he has been. Then he goes silent and still. 

He is a very vocal corpse.

A smaller noise bubbles up from lower in his body, so small you can barely hear. It's just the tiniest little aching gurgle. Then there is a beat where nothing at all happens. And then he takes in a deep deep breath and his whole chest rises with it, ribs pressing sharply against the grey of his skin. And as he exhales, a flitter of little noises that are trying so hard to be words fall off of his tongue. And with those words comes another little grunt and then a sputter and then a cough and then a splatter of off-white vomit. 

You put your husk top on the ground in front of you and stand up to grab him by the shoulders. You push him up and his head flops backwards on his limp neck. He chokes and coughs as thick ooze runs down his chin, out of his scab-covered lips. You push his head forward. He throws up on himself. 

His eyes are blown out into big black holes, consuming all but a thin green ring. They roll, glazed and wet, in their bruised, black, sockets to find you. When they do, they can't seem to see you. 

He manages to hoarsely slur out a "Sollux...?" before he starts choking. 

You sit him up more and he coughs and wheezes and spits out chunks of thick yellow-white. He works at breathing, but it just isn't there yet. His lungs have suddenly been plunged into a violent battle. It is a fight to clear themselves out. You push him to sit forward. 

He coughs into his lap. It's a cough that sounds like barking. You wonder if you should do something, if you are supposed to thump him on the back like you see in movies. You wonder if that helps. You wonder if people do that.

He chokes and fights and desperately claws for breath. He manages to win, though, and it sputters into gentler coughs and attempts at deep breaths.

Once he is able to pull in three or four breaths without coughing, he lets out a very long moan. His eyes droop like a bark beast's and he stares at nothing.

Then he becomes limp and all of his weight is in your hands. You lay him back into the pillows, gently. This time you prop him up like a doll.

His lips move shakily. He inhales deeply. He makes a tired sound with his tongue.

Then he goes back to being a corpse again.

You use your mind to turn him on his side. He does not protest or seem to be aware it is happening. You wait a few minutes, watching him breathe uncertainly. You watch his chest rise and fall, and listen to the accompanying grunts and snores. When he seems sufficiently alive, you go find a cloth in the kitchen. 

You wipe the excess dribble from his lips and chin and a bit of his chest. Without touching him. Without moving from your mark a foot from the couch. Guy should be grateful when he wakes up. 

He threw up on his pants, though. You aren't sure what to do about that.

You guess you should remove his pants.

\--

The sun went down a while ago. You stare at the contents of the thermal hub as it hums, wondering why you didn't buy food this week. You close it and open the freezing box. You have a gross frozen pizza. 

You make the gross frozen pizza.

You take one bite and decide not to eat the gross frozen pizza. 

\--

You spend the day in that arm chair in the living room, the one your lusus found and gave to you. It's not very comfortable. You wonder where your lusus has gone recently. You hope he hasn't gotten himself into anything to stupid. 

You don't dwell on it much. You've been seeing less and less of him these days. You're getting to be that age. He's getting you ready to be on your own. You aren't sure if you're prepared for that. You know you don't want to think about it today. It makes your stomach twist up.

You work on a few things here and there, not really able to focus on anything long enough to finish it. You work on some useless viruses, on some web pages, on a game you're probably never going to actually finish making. You can't seem to genuinely put yourself into it, though. You're sort of just pretending. You're pretending you can focus on anything other than the couch next to you.

He's just snoring, though. You have no idea what you should be treating because he's just unconscious and that's it. You can't tell what he needs. You guess you'll just let him sleep, then. 

Maybe you aught to have cleaned up his wounds a few hours ago, actually. That's probably something you can do.

You get up and get the first aid kit out of the ablution block. You spend a while dabbing at his wounds and cleaning off dried blood and spreading burn ointment over his back.

You discover that he is covered in bruises as well as burns, and that some of the blood was in fact from an open wound near his shoulder blade. You probably should've looked more closely at that before.

He doesn't move or protest or even seem to realize it's happening. He just breathes, in and out, rise and fall. 

You wonder when the last time he saw his lusus was.

\--

He tears himself from the couch. You pretend it doesn't make you jump.

His feet fly across the carpet and his hand slams down on the counter just as he enters the area of the 'stem that makes up the nutrition block. You stare at him. Your brain hasn't caught up with the fact that he moved from the couch.

His whole body lurches as he leans over the sink, which you know is full of dishes and no, no no no "No no no no no!!"

You lurch up from your chair and you grab him with you psiionics before you can physically grab his shoulder. You push him away from the sink and you--as quickly as you possibly, possibly can, lifting his feet off of the floor with your mind in your hurry--haul his idiotic, semi-contious, delirious, mostly-naked ass to the ablution block and sit him down in front of the load gaper just in time. 

You make sure that he does not miss the bowl when he vomits, and then leave him on his own. You're sure he can manage to throw up without your help. You decide, instead, to get him a glass of water from the nutrition block. You press a glass into the hydration dispenser on the thermal hub.

As it fills and hums, you take in a deep breath. This isn't a big deal. This mess will clean itself up, right? Not the vomit. You still have to clean that. The sick asshole in your apartment mess. That will clean itself up.

He's getting better, right? This is a sign he's getting better? He's starting to gain consciousness? Yeah, he'll be out of here soon. With no repercussions. 

He'll be out of here by tonight and you'll go back to your daily cycle of sitting at your husk top and stewing in your own migraines. He'll just be gone. It'll be like he was never even here, save for the smell of puke you'll never be able to scrape from your cerebral jelly. 

He'll move on. You'll move on. You'll never even have to say his name, if you're lucky. 

You pull the cup away and the water stops. 

You walk back to the ablution block. 

He is slumped next to the load gaper. His skin is prickly with goose bumps and his mane is standing on end.

You stand in the door, cup in hand. He stares at you. You don't move. He just blinks. He moves his lips like he'd like to say something. His eyes are brown instead of green. 

He licks his dry, desert-cracked, lips.

"Oh..." You extend your hand with the cup to him. You take a couple steps and lean down so that it's not a far reach. 

His hand is shaky and slow as he brings it up to take it. His quivering fingers with their long, sharpened, claws wrap themselves around the cup. You don't feel confidant letting it go. You're afraid he'll drop it.

He brings up his other hand to support it better, though it is just as shaky and just as slow. He takes the water, eventually, and you let go of it, eventually, and then he brings it to his lips.

Once it touches his mouth, though, he starts pouring it down his throat in desperate gulps.

"Slow down. You'll just make yourself puke again," you warn him. But he's already halfway done with the glass. He does take a second to pause, though, pulling the cup away from his mouth with a gasp and a few heaving pants.

"Seriously. Just, pace yourself. Or something."

"Shuthafuckup..."

He finishes the other half of the glass just as quickly as the first. Then he puts the emptied cup down on the edge of the sink with a clack.

He sits back against the wall, closes his eyes, and breathes. 

"Ca'I have morwater?" he asks on dead air. His voice is dry and full of cracks. It's also deeper than you were expecting. 

"Yeah," you say. You take his glass back to the kitchen to refill it. He hasn’t moved at all when you get back. 

"Alright, now don't be an idiot. Drink it like a grown up this time," you tell him when you return before handing it to him.

"Fuck off," he says, taking it in two shaking hands. He does drink it a little slower this time, though not too slow because if he completely took your advice then he wouldn't be--himself. And then you'd really be worried.

You stand there while he drinks, not sure what to do with your body or mind or hands or eyes. You want to sit down, maybe, but you might seem intrusive. Maybe you should leave him? 

You push your glasses up your nose and look away at the corner of the room. You watch the leaky faucet drip. You examine the cracks in the plaster of the ceiling. You glance at the single, misplaced, crooked, tile on the wall in the ablution chamber that will never stop pissing you the fuck off.

"Whatimeisit?" he says after a few sips.

What? Oh.

"It's uh..." You pull your phone out of your pocket to check. "It's 12:32."

"Night or day?" he asks sharply.

"Night," you say.

"Okay," he says.

He continues drinking and you continue avoiding eye contact. 

"You should still slow down," you say. "You're not going to help yourself by chugging the shit down like an obnoxious patron at an unreliable soporific establishment." 

"I'm going slow," he insists. 

You roll your eyes. He sneers. 

"You'll just throw it back up and your body wont absorb anything," you continue.

"I don't care. I could literally build a solid wood chair and sand it down to a fine, smooth, shiny, finish--nice enough to be graced with the ample rump of the Imperial Condescension herself with nothing but praise and claims of unimaginable comfort--with just my tongue, I'm so thirsty," he says.

"Didn't realize how long it had been since you'd gotten any. I'm sorry. I shouldn't make fun of your failure of a romantic life," you say without even thinking. 

“God bless you, you fucking trash heap,” he says dryly before finishing off the second glass. 

“Hey, I could toss you out at any time. I’ve got no reason to keep your ass here,” you say. 

He stares up at the ceiling and taps the cup with his fingers. 

“So is that why you took all my clothes off or what? Unless I like, in my sun fucked and heat baked delirium, stripped nude upon entering your hive stem in a manic display of subconscious quadrant vomit that even I myself could not have otherwise dug out of the deepest recesses of my mind, that you were just lucky enough to put a stop to before I could tear off my-”

“You’re awful coherent for having just woken up from a heat stroke induced coma,” you say. 

He shrugs. “Maybe my brain meat isn’t as cooked as you thought. Might only be grilled rare instead of medium well.”

“Yeah, you know, it takes a whole lot longer to cook something that thick,” you say. 

“Can I have more water?” he asks. 

“No, you’ll just throw up again and we’re in the middle of the dry season,” you say. “Wait a little bit for your body to absorb what you already drank.” 

“You’re such a prick.”

“Get over it.”

You can’t believe how fast he got on the being obnoxious train.

You go back to the living block to your chair and husk top. He doesn’t move from where he is. The pizza is still cold on the counter.

You spend a while working on the game you’re building. You’re still working on getting this one boss AI to work properly. It just needs a bit of tweaking, mostly, but even that is still work. 

And of course, within about 30 minutes of leaving him on the bathroom floor, you hear him throwing up again. You do your best to ignore it. He’ll be okay. You should probably get him more water, though. Maybe put it in a water bottle this time so he doesn’t drink it all at once. He’s just going to throw it up over and over again anyway.

You remember when you were maybe, 7 sweeps old, you got caught out in the sun for just a little too long. You were sick for two days and you think you might’ve had one of the top 5 of your worst headaches. Turns out you’d baked your organs just a little bit. Couldn’t keep a single thing down.

You try to stop remembering this as it is one of your least favorite memories. 

You close your husk top and go bring him bottle full of water. 

“Drink it slowly this time, you goddamned moron,” you tell him.

“Fine,” he agrees, his eyes looking sticky and tired. He’s still sitting in the same place on the floor next to the load gaper.

“Okay,” you say, making sure he understands before letting him have it. 

And then you watch him for a second to make sure he actually does drink it slowly before going back to working on your game. 

\--

The next three days of your miserable life center around your sudden, unexpected guest throwing up every couple hours or so, him swearing about it and yelling at you about whatever he feels like yelling at you about, and then crying to you about whatever he feels like crying about. 

He sits there in the bathroom in his boxers with your water bottle in his mouth, which you’re going to have to burn when this is over simply due to how goddamned unsanitary his entire person is slowly becoming. It’s like having a giant half-sweep-old child crawling around on your bathroom floor, screaming and crying and puking and yelling and sucking on a bottle. You can’t believe this. You’re both about to enter your 10th sweep of life and he’s completely sober.

You remember when this happened to Terezi. You remember how much of a mess she was. You remember all the blisters, all the puss and bleeding. You remember her eyes, how her eyelids were swollen shut, how they watered down her face for days and days. You remember how sick she was. You remember how pissed she was. You remember how little she screamed while rolling around on the damn floor like this. You remember how she was only a child.

You remember the stark lack of yelling “I’m gonna kill the fucking sun, I swear to fucking God. I’m fucking gonna kill it...” into the load gaper. 

Of course, it isn’t entirely yelling. Some of the time, he’s on the couch next to you while you work on your game. He smells awful of sick and sweat. He lies there, draped over the cushions, covered in blisters and scabs and still sucking on the water bottle, passing in and out of sleep and conversation.

His blood has turned from green to brown to rusty red. 

“It just changes the color, the way I’m doing it,” he insists. “It doesn’t change your DNA, obviously. It just changes the sort of pigment your blood makes and how much of it. My blood doesn’t make any pigment without it. And I’m not taking high enough dosages to get any of the secondary characteristics anyway. I’m just trying to get my body balanced out, alright?”

“Balanced?”

“Yes. Yeah, so turns out a little after the whole puberty thing went down, or was supposed to go down, I realized my mutation was a little shittier than just having ugly as sin blood,” he explains. “In other words, I never did the puberty thing. Or, well, no. I did, eventually, ‘cause I found a guy to sell me rust blood hormones. Only those messed me up really bad. Like, I could not handle that sort of brain... thing. I don’t remember a whole lot about what happened, but I know I was a goddamned mess. I think I tried to kill myself more than once, and I’m just not that kind of person, you know?”

“Yeah, I know. Wouldn’t die even if it was the only option. Violent, obnoxious will to live. We were friends at one point.”

He smirks a little, but then his face falls to confusion, then to something else entirely. Then he brushes it off.

“Anyway, I’ve been trying to get the right kind of hormones that would work with my rotten garbage bag of a body this whole time and being somewhere in the lime-blood territory, horribly, painfully, ironically enough as it is, seemed to work best. But, that wasn’t really a decent step up from my shitty candy blood. Fuck, it might’ve been a step down. So, I wound up settling on olive, since that was the closest thing that made me the least screwed up and I finally got to doing all that bullshit pubescence I missed out on over the passed 4 sweeps. All at once. A real nightmare, but apparently the least awful nightmare.”

“Well, congratulations on... puberty...”

“Thanks... I... I guess.”

He doesn’t say anything more. You feel like you should apologize. You guess you were the one who didn’t realize how complicated it was. 

“I always thought you were screwing it up ‘cause you were an idiot and didn’t bother to do your research. I didn’t realize that trial and error was the only way to do it.” 

He shrugs. “It’s what ever. I’m doing what I have to, alright? I don’t have any other options.” 

He picks a little bit at his peeling forearms. 

“And, besides. I feel better like this.” 

You nod. It's none of your business anyway.

“I need to get going soon, though. I didn’t get my dosage this month. I couldn’t pay last months off. They gave me one of their shitty warnings and I’m basically fucked now.” 

He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes.

“And by shitty warning I mean they tied me up in that one spot by the docks where the sun walkers like to hang out at like 6 in the morning and left me there, in case you were even vaguely curious about the means by which I came to be in the specific predicament that actually directly affects you.

But, HA fucking HA, the shitty warning joke is, in fact, on them, because I managed to entirely rotate this hideous four legged nutrition surface 180 degrees in the other direction, and not only did I escape their maim party relatively unscathed, but I also managed to lead a small parade of wicked undead devastation back to their hide out.” 

He laughs a couple of loud barking laughs and runs his hands through his hair.

“But, the thing about that is, that that made them slightly more dead than is favorable, and now I need to find someone else who can provide me with hormones. And my body’s gonna just have to deal with being in fucked up chemistry-broken hell for while.”

You swear this guy is exactly the same as when he was 6.

“We should catch up properly some time,” he says. “If I ever have to come down here again, that is.” 

You aren’t sure how you feel about that, but before you can respond he smacks himself on the face and groans loudly.

“Augh, I’m such a fucking moron! God, I have the intelligence of a waste napkin heavy with the freshly dumped excretions of a monkey baby. God, fuck me in the ass. I totally could’ve raided their fucking stores while I was there. God dammit...”

Then he goes on and on and on to berate himself with as many creative expletives as he can wrap his mouth around. His mouth runs on and on, emptying into an ocean of obnoxious self deprecation.

“You could just go back there,” you point out. “Unless it’s totally decimated by the undead, there might still be stuff there.” 

He pauses in his newest tantrum to look at you contemplatively. He bites his lips in thought. 

“We’d have to go during the day, though,” he says. “When no one is awake and outside. And there’d be the dead to worry about.”

“You know for a second I thought I heard you say “we” and, I’m sorry, but I’m just wondering what the fuck you think I have to do with this. Unless you have some other accomplice I don’t know about.” 

“I did indeed say ‘we’, as that is the plural version of the first-person singular nominative case personal pronoun,” he says. “Indicating that more than one sad sopping asshole would be present to raid this mother fucker.”

“I don’t know what kind of mess your life is right now, but it’s not my mess. I do computers. I don’t do sun walkers. I don’t do raids. You can eat my entire dripping thorax,” you say. 

“That’s cool. I mean, you suggested it, so I figured you’d follow through, but that’s cool.”

“You’re a manipulative sack of garbage. But not like, good at being a manipulative sack of garbage. You’re just annoying.” 

“So you’re going to help.”

“No. Absolutely not. Get someone who can do sun walkers. Do you still talk to that Maryam, whats-her-shit? Didn’t she like day walkers and the sun and all that stupid hoofbeast shit? Go get her to help you.”

“Kanaya’s on the other side of the goddamned planet, Captor. And you’re right here, being an incredibly fucking powerful psionic.”

“And you’re here, on my couch, in your underwear, uninvited, puking in my load gaper and making a mess of my hive stem and chewing on a water bottle.”

“What if I called it like, old times sake, or something. I know we never really got up to any particularly devastating shit as kids but we did hang out and stuff so. It could just be hanging out or something. We could hang out. With the undead moaning violently in the background with the very real threat of blindness, death, and/or becoming seriously maimed or-”

“Will you shut your fat jaw and leave me to my miserable life forever if I go with you?”

“Yes.”


End file.
